Chapter 22: Delving in the Mine
Not all of the dead half-orc's valuables were in his treasure chest; he had been wearing quite a few as well. Kivan took the half-orc's protective boots, a small ring with a bright blue stone, and his symbol of Cyric, which they'd present in Nashkel as evidence. When the elf grabbed the corpse's greasy hair and reached for his dagger, Ember and Imoen hurriedly turned away and busied themselves with the chest.
"Interesting," Edwin remarked, "although I fail to see its purpose. (Cooking, perhaps?)"
"Watch what you say, wizard," Kivan growled.
"Edwin, why don't you go help Minsc and Ajantis inspect the other two caves?" Ember suggested pointedly. Edwin started to say something, but seemed to think better of it. He closed his mouth and walked out of the tapestried chamber.
Ember sighed. If only he could keep a civil tongue in his head. She looked at Imoen, who was gleefully pulling spell scroll after spell scroll out of the half-orc's treasure chest, her eyes shining as she examined each in turn and identified it as best she could. He had better teach her well.
"Hey, look at these!" Imoen exclaimed, holding up two parchments that did not have the characteristic look of spell scrolls. "'My servant Mulahey,'" she read from the first parchment, "'Your progress in disrupting the flow of iron ore does not go as well as it should. How stupid can you be to allow your kobolds to murder the miners?' And then it goes on about poisoning the ore... oh, and Tranzig is his contact! He's in Beregost, at Feldpost's inn! The letter's signed 'Tazok'."
"Let me see that," Kivan said. Imoen handed him the note, and he studied it closely while she unrolled the second parchment.
"What does it say? Is there any more about Tranzig?" Ember asked excitedly.
"No... it says Tazok sent the kobolds and more poison... and that Tazok's superiors hired the Black Talon and the Chill to destroy iron caravans! It's all tied together!"
Ember leaned against one of the tapestries. All tied together... the raids, the brittle ore, and the bounty on my head. Her mouth felt dry.
"Tazok is a fiend, amongst the cruelest to walk the earth," Kivan muttered. "He has no heart. Any organization with one such as him in a position of authority..."
"And it must be a powerful organization, too," Ember added. "To succeed at locking down the ore supply to the entire sword coast... and unless Tranzig has more than one master, they're after me as well. I'm beginning to feel surprised I am still alive." She laughed nervously.
"Look on the bright side, Em. Now we get to look into your bad guys and Kivan's bad guys and investigate the iron crisis, all at the same time," Imoen said with a faint grin. "If that isn't a very efficient way to be heroic, I don't know what is."
The silken curtains parted, and Minsc entered the chamber. "Come, hurry! There is an elf in the cave. He is chained to the wall, and he says we are doomed!" the giant exclaimed anxiously. Ember and Imoen hurriedly grabbed the remaining contents of the chest. Along with Kivan, they followed Minsc into the middle cave, where an elf in stained purple robes indeed was chained to the wall. Ajantis was trying to break the shackles while Edwin watched with a look of impatient suffering.
"It is hopeless. You may as well leave me and try to flee," the elf said.
Kivan turned and left the cave, returning a minute later with a keyring. The third key he tried unlocked the shackles, and the robed elf rubbed his wrists painfully. "At last I am free of my dreary prison; five and eighty days are far too long for one of the fair folk to live as a dwarf," he said.
"How did you come to be trapped in such an inhospitable place?" Ajantis asked.
"I am Xan, a Greycloak of Evereska, and as proficient in the ways of magic as any man can be," the elf said.
"(Hah!)" Edwin said under his breath.
Xan did not appear to have heard the remark, and continued unabated. "Alas, I was sent to investigate the strange goings-on about this area. It was a hopeless cause, of course; Mulahey found me, bound me, and took my Moonblade. I have not seen the sun almost as long as I have not seen my home."
"We have Mulahey's treasures. Perhaps your blade was one of them?" Imoen asked.
"Doubtful; the brute probably discarded it when he could not use it," Xan said, but nonetheless he watched eagerly as Ember and Imoen displayed the two finely made short swords they had taken from Mulahey's chest. The elf grabbed the hilt of the frailer looking of the swords, and the blade came alive with white flames.
"It's beautiful," Ember said.
"(How that blade could choose someone like him is unfathomable,)" Edwin mumbled behind Ember.
"Look, Boo, it is another sword of justice!" Minsc exclaimed.
"Do you want something to eat?" Imoen offered.
"Thank you, but we should try to get out of this dismal place, hopeless though it may be."
"We've killed all the kobolds, I think, and Immy disarmed the traps. It should be safe," Ember said drily.
"You found and secured the secret entrance?" Xan asked.
"What secret entrance?" Ajantis asked
"It is nearby. A narrow tunnel that leads straight to the surface; it was my entry point. It was not guarded then, but now its guardians are bound to be insurmountable."
"Of course they are," Ember said.
"So it'd be much faster than walking through the entire mine, right?" Imoen said.
"Show us this tunnel," Kivan said.
Xan sighed. "Very well, but do not say I didn't warn you. Come, let us face the impossible together."
They exited the inner three caves and followed a path that curved to the right around a large pool of stagnant water. There were no lights ahead of them, and they heard no sounds other than the ones they made in their passing. There were little signs of the path being used much; even the rock beneath their feet was slimy.
Something made a wet, slurping sound ahead of them.
"What was that?" Imoen asked nervously.
"The guardians. We shall fight them, even though we are bound to fail," Xan said.
The slime on the floor pulled itself together into several grey, viscous masses on the path ahead of them. A contraction rippled through the closest jelly, and it spat a foul liquid at Edwin. The liquid hissed as it struck his hand. Edwin gasped with pain and fired a volley of magic missiles at the jelly, but the spell passed through the grey goo without causing any damage.
"Curses!" Edwin spat, nursing his wounded hand.
"Bad jellies will not harm any, not even evil wizards, while they travel with Minsc!" Minsc bellowed and charged at the jelly. His large sword cut through it, but the viscous mass closed as the sword passed through it.
"No effect?" Minsc said in puzzled voice. "Minsc needs bigger sword!"
Ember jabbed at the grey ooze with her sword. To her satisfaction, the cold blade froze what it touched, and her cut remained. She slashed it a couple times, dodging a burst of fluid as she did so. Kivan struck the half frozen jelly with his hammer. An electrical charge coursed through the ooze, and it exploded into a patch of wet slime. Xan ran ahead of them, stabbing his fiery moonblade into the next jelly. Ajantis followed closely behind the elf, and his lightly enchanted blade also managed to cut the monsters. Imoen and Minsc remained in the back with Edwin, helping him tend his burnt hand, while the others hacked up the remaining oozes.
"Here is the tunnel," Xan said, pointing at a crevice between two large rocks. "No doubt there will be more traps ahead."
There weren't.
A short while later they were all on the surface, watching the first evening stars appear.
"It is certain to rain later," Xan said.
"We shall return to Nashkel in the morning," Ajantis told Xan, "and thereafter, we shall follow the trail of those behind this. You may come with us, if you like."
"I thank you for your offer, but I must return unto Evereska with all haste and report of these dire straits," Xan said.
"You do that," Edwin said.
They shared some food and gold with the elf. He bade them a hasty farewell, telling them how brave they were to continue against insurmountable odds, and wandered off into the night.
"Em, you know how the stories always describe elves as cheerful, happy people?" Imoen asked as they set up camp beneath a cliff wall.
"Yes?"
"Why are none of the elves we meet like that?"
Ember paused and looked at Kivan, who was making a smokeless fire. "I think he might have been like that, once," she said quietly.
---
"You there! Is your name Ember of Candlekeep?"
Ember groaned. This is not funny anymore. Squinting against the early morning sun, she could barely make out the forms of four armored women in front of her.
"Hurry up and answer," the woman continued. "Your answer better be the truth, for your life depends upon it."
Ember stood up and noticed that the others were also getting to their feet. She was wide awake now; her blood rushed with the anticipation of battle. "No, that isn't my name," she said. "I think you have the wrong person."
"You lie!" the woman hissed. "Remember what I told you about lying. You were foolish to even try, as my god Cyric allows me to see through all falsehoods. You shall now die, Ember of Candlekeep. You will never interfere with the Iron Throne ever again."
"Fools," Edwin said. He quickly cast a spell, entangling three of the women with thick strands of cobweb. "(How dare they disturb my sleep?)" Ember grinned at his muttered statement; it was a sentiment she definitely shared.
The free woman threw a dart at Ember, hitting her unprotected arm. Cursing herself for having taken her splintmail tunic off for the night, Ember gritted her teeth and charged at the woman. With a yell, she thrust towards the woman's chest and skewered her just as she raised her arm to throw a second dart. Ember pulled her sword free from the woman and whirled around. Her friends were firing missiles, magical and otherwise, at the women in the cobwebs. One of them had worked her way free - Ajantis was engaged in combat with that one - while another had freed her arms and was firing burning arrows at Minsc. A magical blast from Edwin finished the archer just as Ajantis broke his foe's neck, and the last woman fell to Imoen and Kivan's arrows moments later.
With the battle over, the burning pain in Ember's arm began to draw attention to itself again. She looked at her arm and grimaced when she saw black ichor mixed with blood seeping from the dart wound.
"Here, little Ember. Boo told me you were hurting," Minsc said, holding out an antidote and a healing potion.
"Thank you, Minsc," Ember said with a smile. She swallowed the antidote and then the healing potion, and was relieved to see the wound close cleanly even as the pain was fading.
"Who is the Iron throne?" Imoen asked.
"A trading coster of some importance," Ajantis said. "If I recall correctly, they deal mostly in iron, but also in other supplies, and their methods are rumored to be on the unsavoury side."
"The perfect candidates for housing Tazok's and Tranzig's superiors, in other words," Ember said.
Kivan briefly examined the bodies. "None of them carry letters," he said. "They were well equipped for combat; the leather armors are magical, and they have many potions."
"I don't think they were bounty hunters. They sounded more like bodyguards, or perhaps mercenaries," Ember said.
"But they were sent here to wait for you," Imoen said.
"Maybe they were just told 'Ember of Candlekeep is meddling, get rid of her' with no mention of the fact that I've been wanted since before I ever had a chance to meddle?"
"Why does it matter what they were told?" Edwin asked irritably. "We are only wasting time here, and I doubt those who are after you will tell every insignificant minion why they want you dead - especially when those minions are stupid enough to reveal who hired them before your life is bleeding out of you. (Why do I have to be the only one capable of seeing the big picture?)"
Ember chuckled. "You have a point, I guess," she said. After all, it didn't really matter if those after her head were paid or ordered; she'd deal with them all just the same.
"Let us ready ourselves and leave this place," Ajantis said.
Ember bent down over the dart thrower's body and began stripping it of the magical leather armor.